Found on the Mobile Web is a weekly Wap Review feature showcasing sites added to the yeswap.com mobile portal and WapReview.com mobile directory.

Business/News

silicontap.com: (silicontap.com/index.xhtml) A business and technology news site aimed at investors and venture capitalists and is focused on Silicon Valley startups. The mobile edition contains all the stories from the free web site. Silicontap also has a $25/month premium edition which as detailed profiles of covered companies. The premium edition is not on the mobile web – yet.

Entertainment/Movies

Hollywood Reporter: (mobile.hollywoodreporter.com/htmlsite) Text only mobile version of a movie industry newsweekly. Notable feature is the Weekly Top 10 listing of the top grossing current films with detailed statistics like average gross per theater.

News/US Local by State/IN – NV

Iowa City Press-Citizen: (m.press-citizen.com) Another nicely done newspaper site. Local News, Sports , Editorials and Weather from the Midwestern college town of Iowa City. The Press-Citizen site has the same layout as the mobile editions of Tulare Advance-Register and Visalia Time Delta featured in last week’s Found on the Mobile Web. All three are Gannett papers. It looks like Gannett is mobilizing all their (over 50) papers. If your town has a Gannett paper try replacing the “www.” in the url with “m.” and see if you don’t get a mobile site.

Portals

NetVibes2Go: (m.netvibes.com) “Web 2.0” Personalized home page site Netvibes, has launched a slick looking mobile edition. Customize you Netvibes mobile page with a calendar, weather, notes, email (Y!, gMail, AOL mail, Hotmail or POP/IMAP) and RSS or Atom feeds. This site is big in the blogosphere, the best links: Unwired View’s review, Steve Rubel’s cautions on security.

Search

Century 21 Mobile: (mobile.c21.com) Lets you search for homes for sale anywhere in the US. You can search by city + state or zip code and filter on price range and number of bedrooms and baths. Results include photos and the listing agents’ phone numbers which are not click-to-call! Putting a phone number on a mobile site in plain text rather than as a wtai:// link is a huge missed opportunity.

Search/Local/City Guides

10Best Mobile: (mobile.10best.com) Guide to the best restaurants, hotels, night life and attractions by city for over 3,500 cites around the world. There are multiple categories so “10 best restaurants” is not just the most expensive places in town but the 10 best Indian, 10 best cheap eats etc. Search, directions and brief, but in my experience, accurate reviews make this an outstanding site.

Search/Traffic

Traffic Scotland: (trafficscotland.org/pda) An addition to the list of mobile traffic sites. Traffic Scotland has traffic alerts, scheduled closures and roadwork, weather and live cameras for motorways around Scotland. The camera images are too large for typical mobiles at 320x240px but the perfect size for the new smartphones with querty keyboards and landscape screens like the Nokia E61 and T-Mobile Dash (HTC Excalibur). There’s a wml version of this site minus the cameras at trafficscotland.org/wap

Shopping

Slifter: (mp.slifter.com) A new shopping search site. Searches both online and local brick and mortar stores, though most hits seem to be to online sites currently. Slifter also has a downloadable Java application that doesn’t seem to add much value compared with the web based one. If you register you can save you shopping list and location and send links to bargains by email or SMS. Registration requires a mobile number, something I consider risky especially with new, unknown sites like Slifter. At least the numbers aren’t validated  and I was able to register with an obviously bogus number.

Sports/Motor Sports

Ferrari: (ferrari.mobi) The official site of the Ferrari Formula One racing team. The site has news, photos, driver profiles, technical details, the 2007 F1 calendar with circuit maps and free downloadable wallpapers and ring tones. I’m not ready for an F1 racing motor in full song as MY ringtone but I’m sure someone is.

Technology

Hack a Day for Mobile: (www.hackaday.com/?m=true) A new hardware (mostly) or software hack every day. A typical day’s item is an image, a one or two line description and a link to an off site article. The mobile version has a nice low bandwidth index page linking to individual item pages which have a simplified layout but retain the mobile browser choking 400px wide , 50KB image. The off site links aren’t transcoded either so this site works best in “full” web browser like Opera Mini.

Technology/Mobile/Downloads

Mobile41: (mobile41.com) Themes, wallpapers and ring tones for the Blackberry 7100, 7200, 7520, 8100, 8700 and 8800. Most are free.

Technology/Mobile/Mobile Tech

This is Mobility: (thisismobility.com/blog/?mobilenow) Admob developer and Mobile Monday Silicon Valley organizer Mike Rowehl, has refined the mobile edition of his interesting blog about mobile technology and trends. Mike’s created a tweaked version of Alex King’s WordPress Mobile plugin which, unlike the original, validates, gets 5 out of 5 on the Mobi Ready Report and looks better too. You can download the modified template here.

Travel-Transit/Taxis

Cabbies.mobi: Every traveler should bookmark this site on their phone. It’s a comprehensive listing of taxicab companies in the US, Canada and UK. The listings do include click-to-call phone numbers. My only complaint is that all 60 or so US cities are on one long scrolling page. Spliting the list up by groups of states would greatly enhance usability.

Via: Read/WriteWeb and Developing.mobi